"I already have a vise."

“That’s my mower,” I said, looking wistfully at the machine neglected over in the corner of the storage yard. “Same color, same model—everything.” I made for the riding mower, the one that matched mine in every respect, with the young mower man following. I opened the hood. “You can’t just sell me this gas tank?” I ventured. It seemed a reasonable request, owing to the fact that this machine looked as though it would never be repaired or put into service again. It just had that look. For those who keep track of such things, you’ll recall that squirrels ate a hole in the top of my gas tank, then started on the fuel line, and nibbled a bit on the gas cap itself, but stopped for some reason. Now the fuel line leaked and the tank had a big hole in it. I’d tossed the tank into the trunk of the little car and drove over to the big mower repair facility nearby. I knew that they kept quite a few machines around, and knew also that they would want to see my old tank to make an exact match.

The young man looking at the neglected machine, its seat missing and its cosmetic parts not winning any beauty contests, seemed doubtful of my proposition; it’s not that they didn’t sell used parts, it’s just that he felt that this mower would be fixed up and sold to someone down the line.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. “See, the engine turns ok, even if the mower don’t look so hot.”
A third character arrived, having been summoned by the young man in the shop. He added to the young man’s assertion that this mower would be a good candidate for repairing and then selling.
“Without the gas tank, we’d just end up ordering a new one, and they cost about sixty bucks,” he said. I knew they were probably expensive, but didn’t know just how much they cost. In any case, this third character to our one-act play wasn’t helping my case much. Then, unexpectedly, a plot twist. A fourth man entered the scene, a man of my acquaintance, named LaFontaine. He worked at the tire shop down the road for many years, now worked someplace else. Here is what he had to say, when I made feeble noises about maybe repairing the nibbled tank on my own:
“Listen,” he said, “I’m about the cheapest guy in the world, but I’m going to tell you this: Pay whatever they want for a new tank, and move on. Leave it alone.”
I knew his words for the truth, for the path that I should follow; knew that what he’d uttered didn’t even hint at the endless frustrations, the sweat and cursing and twisted thoughts and metal and hurt and pointless fatigue that lay ahead. He didn’t need to say these things: I knew them already. We were both on the precipice, and he was trying to hold me back, to get me not to jump. But he didn’t know this: That I’d recently bought a used tank on the online forum for ten bucks—one that was intended for another machine entirely--and it was one that I could modify to fit my tractor. It would entail exactly the things I just mentioned, and many more that I can’t even imagine at the moment. Realistically, with all things falling precisely into place, with the meshing of my efforts and the materials I was working, it would take about an hour. With the catastrophes that usually befall such projects, however, it could be the better part of a whole workday. I was off the edge, already into that bewildering and mad world of tinkering that always beckons, seeing if I could somehow streamline the fitting of the ten-dollar tank to cut down on the time and the number of disasters involved. It was then that Greybeard approached, materialized as if out of nowhere.
“Squirrels been at it again?” he observed, eyeing my nibbled plastic tank dangling from the bit of fuel hose like a plaything on a string. It had been twenty-nine years since I’d seen Greybeard, had known him even before I really knew him, and now here he was. This rounded out our cast of characters: Now there was the young man from the shop, his long-haired and bestubbled boss, LaFontaine, Greybeard and of course, me. My shorts were tattered and poor-looking, having left the house in haste to arrive at the mower place on that hot Friday afternoon before closing. I hadn’t counted on Greybeard being there.
“It seems,” he said, “that one might ponder loftier pursuits than this quisquilian affair you address here in your little group.” The young mower man, of about twenty years, stared at Greybeard. His boss, divining that Greybeard somehow knew me, looked to me for a response. LaFonaine was getting on his motorcycle to leave.
“Buy a new tank,” he said.
“Wouldn’t your time be more well-spent discussing, say, Sophia Loren?”
The young mower man, his ample tee-shirt clinging to his more than ample chest, came to life, as if sparked by a sudden jolt.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Now it was LaFontaine, who hadn’t yet started his machine, was astride the large Yamaha, listening to the final words of his leaving. He said to this to the group:
“Sophia Loren is the greatest woman to have ever lived. Period.”
I explained, for the young man’s benefit, and possibly his boss’s, that this was a screen star of unrivalled beauty, charisma, elegance and talent.
LaFontaine was still astride his machine.
“There will never be another like her,” he said. “Best goddamned actress ever.”
Greybeard was silent, taking in the most recent words. Now he spoke up.
“She certainly deserves better than to be discussed by this group of ragamuffins.”
“But you said we should be talking about Sophia Loren,” this was the young mower man with the sweaty tee-shirt. He had a valid point. Greybeard scowled, as only he could.
To ease the tension, I asked LaFontaine, who appeared to have strong feelings about this woman, what films he liked.
“I cannot name a single movie she appeared in,” he said. “I have probably not seen any.”
“Exactly! Exactly!” Came Greybeard again. “Now we are getting somewhere.” He continued, elaborating a bit: “To confine her to the boundaries of a few pictures, moments of fleeting images flashed on a brilliant screen while the hoi-polloi quaffs popcorn and Milk Duds by the bucketsful, would be to ignore the overall monument that is this woman.” He let the words sink in, while the young man, his boss, and LaFontaine and I listened. “Tell me,” he said, “Do you go before a great work of art, stand humbled in front of it, and pick it apart, as if it were some kind of machine to be dismantled?” He gestured at the abundance of machines that surrounded our impromptu stage. “Do you gaze upon the Mona Lisa and say, ‘Nice elbows,’ or ‘good job on that chin?’” He looked about, the group wanting mostly to disperse at this point. “NO!” he thundered, “You do not, you cannot! Doing so would only ignore the masterpiece, the whole work. So it goes with the woman whose name has just now passed our lips.” My gas tank dangled still by its little bit of fuel line I’d cut off—like a little umbilical cord.
“For this occasion I have composed a poem,” said Greybeard finally.
“Oh god, not that,” groaned LaFontaine. The young man’s boss wandered off, getting the shop ready for closing, telling his youthful worker that he could stay and listen to the poem if he wanted, but that the customers’ machines had to be locked away for the night before he went home.

Bands of black
Streak across
Your eyes
Frightful beauty

Tickets’ numbers
One-Two-Three
Say
You’re a cutie

Aisles of roses
Winding through
The eggs
Could not impose

Even a gate
A threshold
To you
I suppose

There was silence then. The boss who’d just left started a green John Deere garden tractor near the shop’s bay door, and this broke the quietude of the poem’s finishing. He was running the machine slowly up the ramp and into the shop. I stood by, in my tattered shorts. LaFontaine started his engine.

“Is that it?” said the young man who’d helped me with my search for a gas tank. And, as suddenly as he’d appeared, Greybeard was gone again. He was funny like that.

The other day I mucked around in the basement, dismantling yet more useless stuff down there. Away came a brick enclosure for an old potbellied stove that had been converted to gas. I’d done away with the stove long ago, so there was no reason to keep the brick thing around. I also cut away the old workbench to free up space in the little room where the furnace would take up residence. I tried to imagine the people down there, long ago, using this as a living space, enjoying the warmth of the little stove, the kids playing on the floor with their toys, maybe some carpets covering the cold, hard plastic tiles underfoot. It couldn’t have been all that nice, even back then, and the years had transitioned this place into a state of such horrible neglect that it made me sad to think that anyone once enjoyed being down there.

I ripped out the old wood paneling, revealed yet more minor termite damage underneath, piled everything out back for a trip to the waste station in the Dodge. The bricks I also loaded into the truck, made a run the next day to the place that recycles them, gave the yard girl ten bucks for the privilege of unloading this unwanted material. Yes, many of the bricks were good, were ones that I would even consider using for another project around the house—maybe a walkway. But I had enough bricks already, didn’t need more. Besides, these were strange bricks, having been painted red for some reason. The glossy red color made them look like they were gaudily dressed up for Christmas. “Christmas bricks,” I called them. I chucked them out the back of the truck, while large dump-trucks rumbled by and concrete-crushing machines ate at the loads of concrete and pavement that had been deposited there. Later, I loaded up the paneling and the cut-up workbench and offloaded the stuff at the waste station. I have the luxury of these places being within four or five miles of the house. I posted a photo of the small bench-vise I’d taken from the workbench, put it up for sale at an offering price of ten bucks. That would pay for the waste disposal fee for the bricks. Someone responded immediately, came over the next day and handed over the money, while we talked about the vise and its various attributes.
“It’s a pretty nice vise,” I said. “I just don’t need it—I already have a vise.”